Logarithms... I sold my house in San Jose in April, 2010 and moved to Las Vegas in July. Since I got here, I have been thinking a lot about logarithms. Probably most people do in the hot desert Vegas sun. Proof by Photo: Please see Figures 1 and 2. (Okay, a few examples don’t constitute a proof, but there...

Don T’s Range of Motion... A guy I know, Don Thomas (known to his family as Donut Head), told me that just recently he hurt his wrist and that its range of movement was only about 20% its normal range of movement. He went on to say that he thought his wrist function was improving at a rate of 1% a day. So how long, Don T asked...

Math Anxiety... Understanding and Managing Math Anxiety Have you experienced math anxiety? Most people have. It’s not unusual for most of us to experience it. Even practicing mathematicians experience it. We will probably never liberate ourselves of it, but we can minimize its effect on us by understanding its origin...

Absence Runs 2... The post just before the New Work post discussed what I though was an interesting and rare event. Here is a snapshot of the background and the event. For years and years, I have kept attendance records in all my classes. At the start of each class meeting, I send around class a roster on which each...

Absence Runs... For years and years, I have kept attendance records in all my classes. At the start of each class meeting, I send around class a roster on which each student initials to indicate his or her presence in class. After class, back in my office, I record student attendance on my Excel Grade Sheet. This last...

Denny’s Possible New Course Gradin... The spring 2009 semester ended on Friday, May 29. The grades for my three classes computed, I entered them into the college’s grade database, put my calculator into my briefcase, tossed what was left of my diet coke into the recycling bin, and head to my car to meet my little faculty friends for fine,...

Dimensions and Ghosts?... I teach at least one algebra class every semester. I always spend some extra time on finding equations of lines and graphing lines. I like to give my students the “big picture” of how graphs are constructed, what graphs do for us and what they mean. This spring 2009 semester I had two algebra classes...

The Distributive Property... Last Friday, May 8, 2009, I met my friend Guy at the King Salad fast food Chinese place for lunch. We meet there often as they have a great buffet with a real good Mongolian Beef and all the diet coke you can drink. We discuss this and that and are often able to solve many complex world problems. Most...

Surprising Results 2: Rings of Equal Vol... Last post we looked at Problem 1, The String Problem. This week we’ll take a look at a problem with an even more surprising result. I’ll call this problem The Ring Problem. In the post, the post of the string problem, we imagined two spheres, a basketball and the Earth. This week, rather than using...

A Hard Easy Problem... I use Excel to record exam and homework grades. I created a spreadsheet probably 10 years ago to keep track of and totals for each of my classes. It works really well and is easy to use. This semester, as I entered the homework and exam scores, I noticed a most interesting event occurring. As students...